


And the rest remains.

by artvinsky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, you're just glad that he's back home.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 00:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1623143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artvinsky/pseuds/artvinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are the wars you fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the rest remains.

It is the look that you see when you look in the mirror in the mornings, the thousand yard stare your weary eyes have when you brush your teeth and wash your face. You see it every morning when you find yourself looking at the mirror for more than you have to, eyeing the circles under your eyes as though they carried all the weight of the fights you've  been in. You’ve stopped counting when you were young and found yourself calling out boys bigger than you to stop pulling punches on the quieter kids on the playground.  
  
It only takes _him_ rousing from his sleep and untangling himself from your bed that look away. 

It was him. Him, with his hair that never sat quite flat on his head when you were both children. Him, even when his soft, boyish edges grew into harder angles that you couldn’t help but look at all the time, much less draw when he both had or hadn’t been looking at you. Him, who always pulled you out, before or during a fight. Him, who always threw the last punch because you’d been too doubled over nursing your bleeding nose. But you were glad the girls at the dances were all right because they didn’t deserve to be spoken to like that before you walked over to intervene.

They had thanked him, and they had thanked you. One had even taken her handkerchief out and went to give it to you to keep you from bleeding all over your already dirt-stained shirt.

Both of you walk back to Brooklyn than night and he’d have the cloth in his hand in case you started trickling red again.  
  
You can't take your eyes from him. From the whole of him. Even when his hair is longer, it never sits flat, past his chin already and the brown strands curl at the edges. You see him rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his right hand.

You two always were early risers. Soldiers. Old habits are hard to break. The sun isn't even up yet. The metal arm catching the lamp light is hard to miss as he stretches on the bed before getting up to do hospital corners with the sheets.

After the months of playing cat and mouse with you and Sam and Natasha, he wanted to put everything together for himself. He insisted. You remember the phone calls he gives you from burners. How you try and track him only to find the number he'd used in a trash bin or in a back alley. Sam and Nat had shared a knowing look from the booth a café in Newark, both staring at you while you distanced yourself from them to take the next call for yourself.

He'd told you not to look for him.  Both of you had been stubborn, but him differently than you.   
You respect his wishes. You always have like you respected him.  
  
But that wasn't to say that the waiting killed you like nothing else ever could. That your fear of him never coming home would grow as the days passed. Then it turned to weeks. Then months. You counted the exact number. Five months, two weeks, and three days. You could start to feel the spells of cold coming down on DC.  
  
But all the while in those months he calls, asks questions. Tells you things that he remembers. Sometimes his calls come regularly in a week, at a daily interval almost, sometimes there is a gap of a good few weeks between hearing his voice again.

His voice is not so much flat but curiosity’s found itself weaving into his words as you listened to him.   
  
"You– you really liked sitting by the window and looking outside to draw. You always had that sketchbook."  
  
"Yeah, that's right, Bucky."   
   
The things he remembered always seemed to be about you.  
  
You say that he could never get you to look at him because you always seemed to get into this trance like state when you pick your pencil up.   
  
He remains quiet. You think that he's almost close to ending the call without a good-bye. Maybe he would call the next day again, you had hoped for yourself.  
  
"Your face sometimes had smudges of charcoal too. You don't notice it when you draw," he says after a beat. You can almost hear his eyes rolling on the other end of the line.   
  
"Yeah, but you did."  
  
He exhales. "Yeah. Had to help you clean up too, I think. You– you were a mess a lot of the time."  
  
You remember the clean cloth he tosses in your lap during those Brooklyn summers, it was the same handkerchief that the girl from the dance had given you, although had worn over through time. Perhaps, she and her friend had already found themselves in better company, but you do not think about that. All you could do was to grin at him, grin like he was as bright as the sunlight the streamed into the window.

He was your sun. He still is. And the light hit his face so perfectly then too, highlighting the softness that seemed to envelop his hard edges, the softness that was inherently him, never quite disappearing even as you both got older. Your charcoal twitched in your right hand.  
  
He would scoff at you when you ignore the cloth and keep yourself covered in the dust and the charcoal. You start to make broad strokes to establish the lines of his jaw, where his neck meets his clavicle that disappears into his threadbare shirt before you smudge with your fingers to define his soft edges. His lips and the way they seemed to always be pouted, and the crinkles around his eyes that you wouldn’t mind losing yourself in.

You would see him watching you sketch him out a moment before feeling his hand on your face, his thumb rubbing small circles on your cheek when he sits across you. Cloth ready in the other hand and his touch gentle, you look at him, into those eyes that were home to you, and you laugh when he rolls his eyes and tilts his head and purses his lips at the black dust sticking to his fingers.   
  
Your faces were close enough that you can feel him breathing easily. Like you both had nothing to worry about in the world.   
  
"You never failed to let me know that, Buck. Sometimes you'd even say, 'You're a mess, Rogers'."  
  
"Well, it's true, isn't it? You're still a mess." You want to hear the humour in his voice. The good-natured humour he'd hit you with, veiled under the insults you both shot each other. The kind he’d have in his voice when he leaned back in the windowsill across from you in Brooklyn, the portrait you had just drawn in his lap and the page is so careful held between his thumb and index finger. He’d say, _‘Are we seeing the same thing when I look in the mirror, Stevie? I’m pretty sure I’m not this fine.’_

_‘Just drawing what I see, Buck.’_

The edge of his lip quirks to that while his eyes flicker to you.

But you strain to hear Bucky's voice and you cannot see what he looks like holding the burner in his hand in the growing cold of wherever he is. You wish so badly that he is at least warm in whatever layers of clothing he has on. His voice is flat on the other end of the line when he starts to speak—   
  
No.  
  
You could hear his shaky breaths. You know these, you were familiar with them in your feverish hazes of the winters in Brooklyn. Every year, every single year you had caught the flu and every year you kept fighting.  
  
To this day, that is all you do. You fight.  
  
And every year you've heard Bucky keeping his breaths controlled as he kept you warm in your fevers. Even when you had burnt up like a fire, Bucky kept his arms around you the whole time. As though he was afraid of you disappearing the moment he lets go.  
  
It's not so different this time, you suppose. It's you holding on this time.   
  
You didn't tell him that you remembered these winters. Winters bring nothing good for you both. Before the war, during, now.    
  
You are the wars you fight. Both of you.  
  
"Steve."  
  
That was the first time he's said your name, over the crack of the line in between you two. After so, so long. You thought you would never hear it and it makes your eyes sting with tears that you keep back.   
  
"What is it, Bucky?"  
  
"I... want to come home."   
  
His quiet words are all it takes for you to break. It is not the way he had first mouthed his own name in a way so alien once the mask came off by your hand on the bridge. It is not the metal fist that had repeatedly connected with your face and made your eyes clouded over the Potomac that breaks you.  It is this.  
  
You cry, and you make no attempt to muffle or mask the quiet sobs and shaky breaths that wrack your throat.  
  
"I'm sorry– Steve, I'm–"  
  
"N-no, no. Buck, it's– it's fine."  
  
 _Please come home._  
  
 _Soldiers have homes to go back to. People they love._  
  
 _We've fought our wars._  
  
 _Please come home._  
  
You are the wars you fight. But your wars are over.   
  
The rest remains, and he sees you now looking at him in your mirror as he moves so quietly to join you. He used to draw every head in the room when he walked in.   
  
He is a ghost now. Subdued.  
  
But he is there. Ghosts cannot wrap their arms around their loved ones. But you feel his hands moving under your arms and wrapping themselves around your waist. The cold metal of his left arm seeps through your shirt and you feel his nose dig into your back. His breath is warm on your shoulder and you can only lay your hands over his, intertwining your fingers together that he readily holds on to.  
  
Your wars are over. But you fight, both of you. Together.  
  
And the rest remains.


End file.
